The Long Arm of Microsoft

eldavojohn writes "Software giant Microsoft is helping the law track down and find phishers and political borders are no boundary for them. From the article, 'One court case in Turkey has already led to a 2.5-year prison sentence for a so-called "phisher" in Turkey, and another four cases against teenagers have been settled out of court, Microsoft said on Wednesday, eight months after it announced the launch of a Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative in March.' This initiative started back in March and has resulted in 129 lawsuits in Europe & the Middle East. Perhaps their legions of lawyers will come to some use for the rest of us but teenagers settling out of court? That reeks of RIAA/MPAA tactics to me."

Re:Political boarders?

[diegocgteleline.es]

Notice that Microsoft is suing only to the people that has set up phising sites that try to look like MSN/hotmail. Is not that so strange that they're doing it.

Re:One Microsoft Way

[diegocgteleline.es]

So wait, Microsoft is suing people who tries to steal your credit card number and they're wrong? Actually, they're only suing pages that try to resemble to MSN/hotmail and that try to steal passport passwords. So suing people that makes your company look like burglars is wrong?

I'm surprised you didn't accuse Microsoft of paying all those physers to set up their site just to sue them later and look like they're fighting crime. It'd have been a good end for your sci-fi relate.

The still even longer arm of TARGET.

[gd23ka]

IF there is something worse than a monopoly then it's a vigilante corporation.
So if you think it's bad Microsoft is now policing the net, well did you know that
the _SCUM_ behind your friendly TARGET store may well someday hold a cold barrel
to the back of your neck?

>>> Retailer Target branches out into police work

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/01/28/AR2006012801268_pf.html [washingtonpost.com]

"Target is pushing forward a different model of corporate giving," ... Exxon Mobil, for example, is building hospitals in the developing world. Cargill Corp. is building schools in areas where potential employees lacked basic skills...

In the past few years, the retailer has taken a lead role in teaching government agencies how to fight crime by applying state-of-the-art technology used in its 1,400 stores. Target's effort has touched local, state, federal and international agencies.
Besides running its forensics lab in Minneapolis, Target has helped coordinate national undercover investigations and worked with customs agencies on ways to make sure imported cargo is coming from reputable sources or hasn't been tampered with. It has contributed money for prosecutor positions to combat repeat criminals, provided local police with remote-controlled video surveillance systems, and linked police and business radio systems to beef up neighborhood foot patrols in parts of several major cities. It has given management training to FBI and police leaders, and linked city, county and state databases to keep track of repeat offenders.

Look at the live situation of phishing

[Ilgaz]

Hi,

Here is the nightmare situation of current phishing all with some https: hosts (rare), decimal IPs, Geocities hosted Yahoo phishing pages which sends mail to Gmail (yes!) etc.

http://www.phishtank.com/ [phishtank.com]

Watch and get amazed everyday, for help, submit or verify the open data.

The situation is already out of hand IMHO.

Re:Torn

[daeg]

The money comes from them trying to keep their operating system "safe" for consumers. While consumers don't know and probably don't care that most phishing e-mails come from compromised Windows systems, consumers will eventually associate "windows == spam". The less spam that large e-mail servers have to serve, the less congested Windows servers will be, and the less likely they will be to go through a large-scale conversion to Linux (or any other platform other than Exchange/AD).

I applaud Microsoft's efforts, actually. They are targeting countries that don't have advanced laws to protect against this, and hopefully will help countries adopt legislation that will make these offenses highly illegal. While it would be nice to see an open, non-profit campaigning for law adoption, sometimes that just isn't feasible. Who would a government or politician trust about computers: Microsoft (who they probably already know since they run Windows, etc) or some Canadian guy who says spam is bad?

At least countries can use the Microsoft ideas as a starting point.

Re:Political boarders?

[NineNine]

You don't have a problem with corporation acting as law enforcement?

I would, if that's what was happening in this case. It certainly is NOT what is happening in this case. They're helping out Keystone Kops in this case. They're not prosecuting anybody. They're working within the system.

If you want to get your panties in a bunch over corporations being involved in law enforcement, then you should read a bit more. You should know that many prisons in the United States, are in fact, run by private corporations [aca.org]. THAT is a "corporation acting as law enforcement". MS helping cops to track down phishers is not.